How Do We Heal the World of Work?

The workplaces of the future, the ones that will truly thrive rather than survive, will not seek to return to work or to manage the transition back. The businesses, that will emerge from this season of our lives, will look forward and learn from the past. They will not want to go back, instead, they will want to develop, to build, to create, and to innovate with bravery and honesty. They will draw energy from the past, and strive to experience post-traumatic growth.

Learning from the failed algorithm approach they will look to the basic needs of the people who work with them, not for them. They will ask curious questions and listen with openness to the answers. They will seek feedback and listen to concerns. They will connect, at the most human level, with the people who spend more than 40 hours of their 168 weekly available hours to their business, and they will

Become connected workplaces, serving as a point of unity where the business, the individual, and the teams can realise their potential side-by-side. Truly connected workplaces will shed the ‘them versus us’ paradox and embrace the reality that the majority of people care deeply about their career and therefore come to work to realize their potential.
Put wellness before productivity. Safe, secure, and strong in the knowledge, that when the people they work with, are well productivity will follow. They will have learned, or come to realise, from COVID-19 that humans are not productivity machines and, people do not somehow become well once they are productive. No, people perform at their best when they are well. Embedding wellbeing front and centre, through redesigning jobs with a human first focus, will open up the possibility for people to live and perform at their best.
Offer Friction Free Flexibility. Rather than demanding, or worse still implicitly suggesting, that you must return to the work in the traditional sense. The connected workplace will offer flexibility without any questions, any friction or any raised eyebrows. In doing so, the connected workplace, through action, acknowledges the strength of commitment that its people had during COVID. Rather than fighting for a return to the old, it will draw energy from the change, and use it to create a more human way of working. In doing, so the thriving workplace says, I trust you, I believe in you and I know what you will be productive, engaged and your best self no matter where you work from. Let’s do this, together.
Be Brave, by asking questions and really listening to the answers about how, why and where people want to work. Through open and dynamic conversations they will learn to understand the needs of their people at the different stages of their life and will use that information to create a workplace that meets the business needs and the needs of their people.
Recognize the latent leadership skills and talents built through unpaid parenting and caring. They will welcome returners to the workplace with respect and integrity, and name the value of unpaid parenting and caring work to the paid workforce. They will teach parents and careers the technical skills they need to work while rewarding them for the core human skills they have built before returning to the paid workplace. In doing so, so they recognize the limits of a workplace conversation based on market value and move, with transparency and purpose, to value the core human skills that underpin our economy.

Integrity, honesty, transparency and trust are the guiding principles underpinning these businesses. People will be recruited for their ability to connect with others and to communicate. Leaders will no longer focus on what needs to be done, rather they will focus on how to negotiate connections between diverse opinions so that the people they lead feel psychologically safe to be themselves at work.
Leaders will negotiate equity by teaching an understanding of and building respect for difference.

The gender pay gap will close as women have equal access to the opportunity that remote working brings.

While this might sound like utopia and a dream never to be realised, remember you are this real possibility to a system that was broken and needed to be razed to the ground. Mid-pandemic, that has now happened, and we must at least try to rewrite the algorithm to focus on human needs and connection.

Sinead Brady, May 2020.